Giro gallery: A historic ride through the Dolomites to Rome

Harry Talbot, Zac Williams, Gruber Images, Kristof Ramon, Cor Vos

And just like that, the Giro d'Italia is over. The gladiators have laid down their weapons. History has been made amidst the treasured ruins of Ancient Rome. Now, enough with the clichés – by no means a promise – we have a bike race to celebrate.

This Giro was not exactly the barnstorming wall-to-wall spectacle that fans and followers dream of. As we all expected, Jonas Vingegaard and his team put some early hiccups behind them and dominated the Giro, the last week especially. At the end of 21 days of racing, Vingegaard had won five stages and Sepp Kuss took the only other summit finish for himself, both of them completing the Grand Tour stage win trilogy. More importantly, Vingegaard built himself a commanding lead after taking the maglia rosa on stage 14, and with his fifth win on stage 20, he secured victory by five minutes 22 seconds over Felix Gall, who himself was a clear and strong second.

As the Dane raised the trofeo senza fine on Sunday evening, he became only the eighth rider to claim membership to the exclusive club of winners of all three Grand Tours, an achievement he can add to the list of his triumphs over Tadej Pogačar – first past the post.

But Vingegaard and Visma were not the whole story. There were other jerseys to battle over – Magnier vs. Narváez; Eulálio vs. Piganzoli; Ciccone vs. The World – breakaways to animate, GC standings to sort out, and one, maybe two, dwindling opportunities for the hungry sprinters.

As we look back on the past seven days or so, I think we can all agree on one thing at least: The Giro's third and final week, from Switzerland to the Italian capital via the mighty Dolomites, will prove the most picturesque week of Grand Tour racing all year. You can keep your Alpe d'Huez and Champs-Élysées; I'll take the Passo Giau and Roman colosseum any day.

First things first, a quick recap of week two’s largely transitional stages, the meat in the generous sandwich that is a Grand Tour.

The all-important stage 10 represented one of Vingegaard's aforementioned hiccups, as the Dane – unintentionally wearing an organisation skinsuit instead of a highly-developed team issue alternative – had what he described as a "terrible" day.Filippo Ganna, meanwhile, delivered on his favourite status to win by almost two minutes to his teammate Thymen Arensman in second place.Jhonatan Narváez then scored his third win of the Giro, kicking off an intriguing fight with sprinter Paul Magnier over the points classification.Stage 12 was another day for aggressive racing, with Movistar shredding the peloton on the lumpy terrain to drop Orluis Aular's pure-sprint rivals. However, Alec Segaert erupted from the reduced peloton in the closing kilometres to take his first Grand Tour stage win and add another gold star to his team's Giro.

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